Abstract

We describe an algorithm to determine dense 3-D structure in a static
scene from an image sequence captured by a moving camera. Metric
camera motions are first determined using a recursive structure from
motion algorithm based on tracked feature points. Dense depth
information for a subset of key frames is then obtained using a novel
probabilistic depth carving algorithm - analogous to space
carving - in which depth probabilities obtained locally about the key
frames are combined in 3-D space. An important component in this
process is that opacity and occlusion relationships are modelled
explicitly, enabling consistent combination of the depth
probabilities. Results of experiments on a real sequence illustrate
the effectiveness of the approach.